In
the bowels of the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of Natural
History, in a theater that held more than 200 people, the Discovery Institute
showed its hour-long program, The Privileged Planet: The Search for Purpose
in the Universe, based on a book of the same name written by a philosopher
and an astronomer. The program held on June 23 was billed as a national premiere
of a documentary, but the invitation-only screening invited a flood of criticism
from across the nation for the museum.

Although the National Museum of Natural
History hosted a showing of a movie about intelligent design, it did not accept
a fee, nor did it co-sponsor the event. Photo by Naomi Lubick.

Both the book and the film are not-so-subtle treatises on intelligent design,
produced by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, an organization that promotes
the belief that Earth was made by an intelligent creator (see Geotimes,
April 2005). The Privileged Planet argues that Earth is rare,
and its intelligent life form (humans) even rarer, something that will likely
be borne out by humans exploration of the universe. The films final
message is that the universe must have been created by an intelligent designer
because it has been made in just such a way so that humans can observe it.

Once scientists and the media heard that the Smithsonian had agreed to show
the program, through a story in The New York Times on May 28, a storm
of protest erupted. The Smithsonian had accepted a $16,000 rental fee and imposed
its own requirements that it be acknowledged as a co-sponsor of the event, just
as it would have for any other special event. But after a review in response
to outside comments, the museum declined to accept the fee and to be a co-sponsor,
but decided to honor the contract. The Smithsonian also made the statement that
the content of the film is not consistent with the mission of the Smithsonian
Institutions scientific research, a key requirement for private
events held on the museums campus, as well as a statement saying it does
not support or endorse the views of the Discovery Institute or the film.

Randall Kremer, the museums director of public affairs, says that in March,
the movie was first reviewed under administrative guidelines as a private,
invitation-only event and was determined not to have any overtly religious or
political content. However, he says, the scrutiny was not broad
enough to take into account that many people would interpret this that Smithsonian
was partnering or supporting activities of the Discovery Institute, the
wider implications of which the second review took into consideration. The Discovery
Institute released its own comments saying that the Smithsonian clearly does
not support the films message.

The idea behind the documentary is to convince people that there was an
intelligent designer, a purpose that hits you over the head at the
end, says Irwin Shapiro, a professor at Harvard University and the former
director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who watched a DVD
of the film before it was shown at the Smithsonian, but after the controversy
broke. Its a propaganda piece, subtly masquerading as a science
documentary. The script only uses design and intelligence
a few times, and not together in the film.

Despite some scientifically accurate statements, the problems with the film
are innumerable, say some scientists, including Frank Drake, a senior researcher
at the Center for SETI Research in Mountain View, Calif. The film, he says,
is full of faulty facts and has very slanted interpretations
of things.

Drake points to the example used that total eclipses prove the existence of
an intelligent designer because the moon is exactly the right distance to block
out the sun just enough to see its corona and determine the stars composition.
But answering why that example is spurious  for example, total eclipses
occur on other planets, too, and humans have found other ways to observe the
suns chromosphere and corona without eclipses  may be futile, Drake
says. Its the trap they want you to fall into, he says. They
will bombard you with their coincidences and weird interpretations of things,
until it becomes he-said-she-said.

Scientists worry that the other potential trap is that the film looks like a
documentary to the untrained eye. Drake says that the movie is beautiful,
the script is well written, with a pleasing original score, and obviously
was a very expensive production. Shapiro points out that the British-accented
narrator contributes to the feeling that this is a legitimate science documentary.
I thought it was very slick and insidious, Shapiro says.

Scientists have voiced concerns that because the Smithsonian did not cancel
the films showing, the Discovery Institute would gain credibility. That
argument has some consequences for the engagement-versus-non-engagement debate
that scientists have been having, prompted by the Kansas state school board
trial on evolution, for example. Its a lose-lose situation
for science, a win-win for intelligent design, Shapiro says. If
a scientist engages [anti-evolutionists] in debate, it shows that they have
credibility, just like the Smithsonian allowing them to use their facilities.
If you ignore them, they win by arguing that evolution must be dubious if scientists
wont defend it.

Charles Beichman of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is
project scientist of NASAs Terrestrial Planet Finder mission and was interviewed
for the movie, says that he does not mind the discussion of philosophy with
science. Still, if distributed to schools (it has already been shown at various
universities and churches across the country), this movie does not belong in
the science classroom, Beichman says. When it comes to the purpose of the universe,
this is a realm where in the end, science can determine a significant
set of facts, he says. At that point, science stops, [and] you try
to figure out, Is there a broader context? But that is religion
or philosophy, not science.

Charles Townes, a Nobel prize-winning astrophysicist, says that integrating
religion and science makes sense. My own view is that, while science and
religion may seem different, they have many similarities, and should interact
and enlighten each other, Townes said in a news conference on March 9,
upon accepting the Templeton Prize for progress toward research or discoveries
about spiritual realities. Townes said that if the universe has
a purpose or meaning, this must be reflected in its structure and functioning,
and hence in science.

Jay Richards, the Discovery Institute philosopher who co-authored the book The
Privileged Planet and is prominently featured in the film with co-author
Guillermo Gonzalez, an astronomer at Iowa State University in Ames, cited Townes
during the question-and-answer period following the films showing in June.
Is there purpose in the universe, and if so, can we find evidence for
it? he asked rhetorically. Both authors say yes, and Gonzalez said that
he wanted to find a graduate student to prove that humans evolved at the perfect
time in the universe to observe it. Its possible, Gonzalez
said, to find such evidence.

Richards also said that he believes intelligent design is on the cusp of being
accepted, describing it as in the middle of the period of rejection that has
preceded past scientific paradigm shifts.

But finding proof of God or some kind of designer is impossible, most scientists
say. The business of science is only to understand and tell how things
happen, and religions business is to tell us why, Drake says. Once
scientists get into why, they get in trouble.

During the same question-and-answer session, Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) commended
the filmmakers and The Privileged Planets co-authors. Mixing science,
religion and politics, Culberson then made a plug for funding SIM PlanetQuest
and Terrestrial Planet Finder, two nascent NASA programs that are to be launched
in the next decade to search for extrasolar planets that might harbor life elsewhere
in the universe.

A title like The Last Giant of Beringia may conjure up images of large
beasts roaming the vast steppe tundra of Beringia, the joined lands of northeastern
Asia and northwestern North America. But this book by Dan ONeill is actually
about a different type of giant  the kind that Isaac Newton described
as one upon whose shoulders we stand, in order to see farther. A richly anecdotal
biography, the book covers the life of the late David M. Hopkins, one of the
giants of the earth sciences.

Alaska historian ONeill builds vivid images of Beringia, past and present,
with the ever-present Hopkins, who for decades was the most energetic advocate
for studies of the geology, chronology and paleoenvironments of the Bering land
bridge. He played an enormous role in stimulating generations of fellow scholars
and graduate students to look beyond  to stand on his shoulders 
and seek answers to the questions he posed.

ONeills admiration of his subject shines through in this tribute.
Hopkins is portrayed as a visionary, a fighter of administrative inertia, a
lover of fieldwork, defiant of health problems, a homespun philosopher and a
first-rate scientist. All are true, but relentless praise can wear out the reader
and warning flags are raised by the time ONeill dubs a landmark book Hopkins
edited, The Bering Land Bridge, the Bible and refers to Hopkins
colleagues as disciples.

Chronological and thematic discussions of Bering land bridge studies show how
Hopkins took a feature sketched in broad brush by another figurative giant,
Canadian George M. Dawson, in 1894, and made it into the carefully mapped and
much better conceived linkage of continents that we understand today. The coming
together of Canadian, Russian, Chinese and American scientists to study the
land bridge elegantly parallels the concept of Beringia. Hopkins Asian
colleagues warmly greeted him after his publication of The Bering Land Bridge,
which rose above the Cold War to include invited works by authors from both
continents. A second edited volume, Paleoecology of Beringia, built strongly
upon these alliances as well.

When history meets science, the ride can be bumpy. Beringia remains a land of
burning questions relating to glacial chronology, paleoenvironments, back-and-forth
migrations of animal and plant species, and the first peopling of the New World
 and ONeill addresses these in an accessible and entertaining fashion.
The quest for direct evidence as to the composition of plant life in the steppe
tundra makes for interesting reading. He shows that the past is the key to the
future, so these studies say much about ongoing global change. He also acknowledges
the first Americans discovery and colonization of half of the earth
as one of the great accomplishments in human history, making them
giants, too; a welcome respite from the view that they simply followed
the animals.

Imagery, however, sometimes stands in the way of information. ONeill states
that as sea level fell, Asia and North America began to reach for each
other like the outstretched arms of God and Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel. When the fingertips touched, a charge of new life streamed into the
Americas. Actually, this was a two-way charge: Camels and horses streamed
the other way into Asia, and DNA evidence indicates that Asian-derived bison
also returned the other way in later land-bridge episodes. Mixing metaphors
with wild abandon, ONeill then describes the two continents as joined
at the head like Siamese twins, one of which is then the others
fickle lover  all of this, including God and Adam, in a scant
two pages!

At one point, ONeill states that the steppe tundra community covered
a firmer substrate than todays mushy, wet tundra. What is missing
is that this likely had something to do with trampling by large grazing mammals,
so that the modern absence of this vegetation type may reflect the absence of
mammoth, bison and horses in the region. Charlie Schweger, featured in this
book as one of Hopkins intellectual offspring, told me, tongue-in-cheek,
that if mammoths were alive today, they would exceed federal guidelines for
loading on tundra and would not be permitted to wander there. By their presence
they would change its character.

The change to wet tundra poignantly signals that these giants are gone, a landscape
lament to their passing. The Last Giant of Beringia is also a lament,
to the passing of Dave Hopkins. Many in his circle of colleagues are introduced
in this book, and (its title notwithstanding) I expect that he would be pleased
to see them in turn emerge as new giants of Beringia.

Wilson is instructor of geology
and environmental sciences, and past chair of the Department of Geology at Douglas
College, New Westminster, British Columbia. He also teaches half-time in the department
of anthropology at Douglas and is adjunct professor of archaeology at Simon Fraser
University.

The story of arsenic in Bangladeshs drinking water is a fascinating and
frustrating saga, full of science, politics and plenty of human tragedy. But
while biogeochemist Andrew Meharg of the University of Aberdeen gives an overview
of arsenic in Bangladesh in his book Venomous Earth, he unfortunately
devotes little space to developing this rich subject.

Bangladesh is one of the poorest and most densely populated parts of the world.
Until 30 years ago, most of Bangladeshs drinking water came from surface
water that was heavily contaminated by sewage; in 1960, water-borne diseases
such as dysentery, cholera, diarrhea, typhoid and hepatitis killed 1 in 7 infants
and 1 in 4 children under the age of five.

In the 1970s, international aid agencies funded a massive well-drilling program
intended to provide clean drinking water. Over subsequent decades, the world
community discovered that many of the safe new wells yielded water
with exceptionally high levels of arsenic (see Geotimes,
May 2005). (Arsenic occurs naturally in Earths crust and may be found
in many geochemical settings  usually in small amounts, but occasionally
at attention-getting concentrations, as in Bangladesh.)

While the new wells have cut pathogen-related childhood deaths almost in half,
many Bangladeshis now show signs of moderate to severe arsenic toxicity, including
skin discolorations, lesions and cancers. Over time, more serious effects of
long-term arsenic poisoning (such as gangrene and internal cancers) are expected
to become common in the Bangladeshi population. At present, a number of organizations
are studying the sources of arsenic in groundwater in hopes of identifying low-arsenic
regions and aquifers that could provide alternate drinking-water supplies. Unfortunately,
as of yet, there appears to be no easy or cheap solution.

But very little of that story is conveyed in Venomous Earth. Despite
the intriguing subtitle (How Arsenic Caused the Worlds Worst Mass
Poisoning), and the publishers blurbs on the books back cover
and flaps, only the first 35 pages and last 13 pages deal directly with the
arsenic crisis in Bangladesh. The first chapter describes the complicated history
of the region, and some of the politics and controversies surrounding the international
agencies well-drilling program and its aftermath. And the second chapter
gives a brief gloss over of several current hypotheses as to the sources of
arsenic in Bangladesh. The treatment of these hypotheses is simply too short;
the reader is given insufficient information with which to judge Mehargs
briefly stated but rather sweeping conclusions.

In dealing with some of the financial, technical and social challenges of coping
with arsenic in Bangladesh, the author indulges in some fingerpointing that
seems a little fruitless. Still, Meharg does successfully convey a sense of
the complexity of the situation, including the mind-boggling logistics of testing
more than 1 million wells in a country with limited transportation infrastructure
and few laboratory facilities, and the social barriers that prevent households
of different castes from sharing one low-arsenic well. That said, Meharg once
again attempts to cover too much ground in too little space.

Most of Venomous Earth focuses on arsenic poisonings related to human
activity in industrialized nations. Arsenic has been used for a striking variety
of purposes in our indoor and outdoor environments for centuries, and has been
recognized as a poison for almost as long. Unlike some of todays highly
specific designer chemicals, arsenic has a great variety of effects
on the body and a plethora of industrial uses.

Our forebears dealt with arsenic as both a nuisance byproduct of mining and
a useful active ingredient in numerous fields from medicine to home décor.
Only relatively recently has the use and disposal of arsenic been restricted
by new regulations on environmental, occupational and consumer safety. At present,
the primary uses of arsenic have shifted toward a few industries, including
agricultural pest control, wood preservation and glass production.

The chapters on industrial, medical and household uses of arsenic contain many
interesting anecdotes about arsenic, but it is difficult to extract from these
narrow topics any perspective on the situation in Bangladesh. These sections
do make the interesting point that the Bangladesh situation is not the first
time that arsenic has caused a pervasive public-health problem. However, this
finding is not unique to arsenic: The same could be said of other elements such
as mercury, which is associated with a similarly broad array of industries and
uses, including cosmetics, power plants, thermometers and dental amalgam.

For my tastes, the book as a whole treads too lightly over each area, giving
a scattershot overview of each topic with little synthesis. My disappointment
partly stems from the bait-and-switch advertising, which seemed to promise a
book with rather more to say on Bangladesh. All in all, the various chapters
of the book form a series of short essays that, while interesting, only skim
the surface of each topic, giving the reader an idea of the variety of forces
at play in Bangladesh, but not doing justice to the situation.

Ryker, formerly with the U.S. Geological
Survey, is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in engineering and public policy at Carnegie
Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. She previously wrote about arsenic contamination
in the November 2001 Geotimes.

The Decatur
area in the Tennessee Valley of Alabama is a busy transportation corridor, traversed
by Interstate 65 and U.S Highways 31 and 72 and, in the eastern part, includes
the high-growth area on the west side of Huntsville, Ala. The area is underlain
by stratigraphically complex Mississippian rocks and by alluvium deposits associated
with the Tennessee River. New geologic mapping is providing detailed geologic
data critical to the continuing development of the Decatur area.
Part of the Mississippian Pride Mountain Formation is exposed on U.S. Highway
31 in the Decatur region of Alabama. Recent mapping by the Geological Survey
of Alabama provides detailed information about the busy transportation corridor.
Courtesy of Andrew K. Rindsberg.

The mapping, conducted by the Geological Survey of Alabama and supported in
part by the U.S. Geological Surveys STATEMAP Program, includes seven 7.5-minute
quadrangles. Six of the quadrangles have been published in the Quadrangle Series,
and the remaining quadrangle is scheduled for publication this summer. Published
reports comprise a printed and bound text describing the geology of each area
and a plot-on-demand geologic map, cross section and explanation.

The Decatur area was chosen as a high-priority mapping area by the Geological
Survey of Alabamas external Geologic Mapping Advisory Committee. The goal
of the advisory committees long-range geologic mapping plan is to provide
new geologic mapping in areas of rapid urban and industrial development along
Alabamas primary transportation corridors.

Many communities in the area rely on groundwater for their domestic and industrial
water supplies. The geologic maps will aid in protecting existing water supplies
and in siting new wells. The quadrangles are underlain predominantly by carbonate
rocks, and karst features are locally common. The maps document the distribution
of karst-prone formations, allowing for more informed planning. Mississippian
carbonate rocks have been quarried extensively in the area for use in construction.
The demand for crushed stone is expected to increase, and the maps will be valuable
exploration tools in the search for additional aggregate resources.

W. Edward Osborne contributed to the Maps column
this month. Osborne directs the Geologic Mapping Program for the Geological Survey
of Alabama.

For more information or to purchase individual maps, visit www.gsa.state.al.us
or call (205) 247-3636.